I was awake VERY early. Our air conditioner was a bit…loud. Also…it was a very exciting day! First day in the parks with Nick since 2018 AND Star Wars day.
Nick is the Star Wars person in our house. And by that I mean I really had never seen a Star Wars movie until two weeks before our trip. Nick though… So he was pretty excited to see the whole Galaxy’s Edge area, and I was excited to see him experience it.
I had very lofty goals for this morning so I got ready for the day and dragged Nick out of bed. That actually didn’t take very much effort today. Even with him deciding he needed to put contacts in, something I don’t think he’s done in months, we achieved my goals. Oh…and we ate these (half of) these beauties for breakfast that we’d gotten at Everglazed the day before. The doughnuts themselves were good, and the flavor combos were good, but with all the icing and such the cereal and cookie pieces got soggy. Womp womp.
Anyway…we made it to the bus stop before 7 am. Nick handed over his cell phone, and with the atomic clock going on that phone, and MDE open on my phone, I successfully scored us a 9:20 am Lightning Lane for Rise of the Resistance. I kid you not, the adrenaline that produced had me actually shaking for a solid few minutes. But I did it. We would be riding Rise of the Resistance today!
So then we settled down to wait for a bus to show up, which obviously involved blurry selfie taking because…still shaking from my success.
A bus came along eventually. We packed it to standing room only and we were off on the pretty short ride to Hollywood Studios. It always amazes me how centrally located French Quarter is, given its proximity to Disney Springs.
Almost as soon as we were off the bus, I started getting comments about my shirt. Today’s shirt was “It’s still MGM to me”. I had expected a few comments, but I got a LOT of comments from both guests and cast. All agreeing, and many “I’d agree if I was off the clock” haha. All day. It was kinda fun having conversations about it.
Ok, so…we cleared security just fine, and headed into the park. There were no ropes up anywhere, so we just walked straight to Toy Story Land. This was Nick’s first time in Toy Story Land and he was very impressed. We lined up immediately for Slinky Dog, and there probably were not more than 200 people in front of us. We were in good shape for whenever this line started moving.
We waited and took in the details until they opened the actual queue at about 8:15 or 8:20. Early entry officially started at 8:30. We were obviously in the park way before that. Like…before 8. Once in the queue, we waited a bit longer. They started loading people at exactly 8:30. We didn’t have to wait very long though, and we ended up with front row seats. As expected, Nick liked Slinky Dog.
From Slinky, we completed the Toy Story Land tour with Midway Mania. The wait for this was probably about 10-12 minutes. No surprise, Nick beat my score by a large margin, but we both had fun.
By the time we were off Midway Mania the park was opening to the offsiters and wait times were skyrocketing, so we decided our best plan of attack was to head for Galaxy’s Edge and wander until our Lightning Lane time that was just a few minutes away. But first…a selfie to commemorate Nick’s first time in Toy Story Land!
We entered Galaxy’s Edge from Toy Story Land and it’s amazing how quickly and how completely the transition occurs. I had skipped Galaxy’s Edge this summer, so this was new to both of us. We were both impressed.
And Nick was on cloud 9 almost immediately. Very soon after entering this area, we came across Chewie and some others. Chewie saluted Nick’s beard. And just like that, Fanboy mode engaged!
We wandered a bit, taking pictures and watching the Stormtroopers. The Stormtroopers pointed out Nick and said he “has a pretty impressive beard for a non-Wookie”. Yeah, he was over the moon.
By now it was time for our Lightning Lane, so, with some effort because this land is really discombobulating and difficult to navigate, we found Rise of the Resistance. Thankfully, it was actually running. No really…this ride goes down ALL the time. We more or less walked right on the ride, past the 3 hour wait. And don’t worry, we got the requisite Stormtrooper shots, even if Nick was too excited to hold still for a picture!
Rise was…wow. I almost understand why people wait hours for this one. It WAS worth the Lightning Lane. Really impressive ride. And, no surprise…it went down shortly after we rode, so thank goodness we got that early Lightning Lane time AND rode early in our timeframe.
Following Rise, we did some photopass pictures and did some more wandering picture taking.
Then it was time for Smuggler’s Run. The standby wait was 90 minutes, but we had already determined we would be utilizing the single rider line for this one. We waited less than 15 minutes. Of course doing the ride this way meant we both were engineers, but it worked.
Smuggler’s Run was fun, but all of the buttons for the engineers are to the side of their seat rather than in front, so some aspects of the attraction definitely get lost in translation. But it was still fun, and it was evident that Nick was still fanboying when we reunited at the exit!
Here we set up our mobile order for lunch at Docking Bay 7. Two Endorian Chicken Tip Yip meals, and a spork for Nick. Our window was still a ways out, so we did some more photopass pictures. Yes, I had pre-purchased Memory Maker.
Then we wandered some more, taking in the sights, and trying out the blue and green milk. Neither were offensive flavor-wise, but blue was definitely more flavorful…by a lot. We actually liked blue. Green was fine but boring.
We had killed enough time so I hit “I’m here” and we started walking back towards Docking Bay 7, fully expecting, based on the mobs of people that had been around the entrance when we’d been getting pictures taken, that we would have to wait quite awhile for our food to be ready. I was very pleasantly surprised to get the food is ready notification while we were still walking towards Docking Bay 7.
Needless to say we were able to go right in and get our food. This was Nick’s first experience with mobile ordering and he definitely liked it. It IS good when it works smoothly. Nick found us a table and we sat down to eat. The food portion was impressive (it’s more food than it looks like), and it was solid for a quick service, but honestly, it was a couple of extremely large chicken nuggets and probably Kraft mac and cheese. The atmosphere here, though, was impressive, and, by Hollywood Studios standards, this really was a pretty good quick service meal option. We did not leave hungry, and our digestive systems didn’t get destroyed. A win for Studios.
After lunch we made our way out of Galaxy’s Edge. On our way, Nick got another beard salute from Chewie.
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